Vehicles are everywhere, fights are monstrosities

Not terribly long, which is why the new system is much better. I was usually in a position where I'd be getting somewhere around 60 Mech/tick. That means 35 minutes between tanks.

You can, so long as both sides have access. Sure, MAX suits are easy to get, but C4 is even easier. Liberators are just as easy to pull as MBTs. And because resources aren't a reinforcing loop where winners win more/losers lose more, you can always reasonably believe that each side will have the necessary counters available to them.

As long as they keep the vehicles accessible, they can pull in phase 2 whenever they want. I like the idea of resources as a strategic layer in fights, but if it just stopped at "Have some tanks, not quite enough that you can live in them, but close." I'll be happy.

1: This is a combined arms game, you just HAVE expect vehicles in a battle, that's how stuff works..if you don't really like it...there is CS,BF,COD
2:Vehicles STILL don't have any real purpose just to sit and farm a spawn room or kill the spawn room farmers (exceptions: sundy, gal)
3: They are just too disposable, you leave it get a new without any penalty --> bad design choice

I haven't been able to fight at every Hossin base yet, but I haven't seen anything there as bad as things like Broken Arch Road or Abandoned NS Offices.

And for infantry outdoors: it'd be nice if you could get some mixed combat, but if I have to choose between no tanks at all, and making infantry pull tanks to get from base to base? That's not even a real choice.

Abandoned NS offices can be quite fun if you play with an outfit platoon. The other month with ISK, we were screaming orders down the mic whilst attempting to hold the [A] point from the infantry and tanks who were trying to defend the base. NC infantry were coming out from all buildings like lemmings and they had lightenings splashing the cap point. We got pushed back as we eventually became completely surrounded, but we got a tonne of kills and some good battle gratification.

Alot of the game IS what you make it, even if there are gaping flaws in it.

Pray tell what are the objectives in the game right now? Not in the future, that stuff is 6 months away or will never come.
The only objectives I see are:
- Capture a Tech plant, Bio lab and Amp station on the continent.
- Capture 75% of bases on a continent and win the alert that follows.

That's it. You can not expect people to work as a team without any objectives. That is just not happening.
Sure some people like to do galaxy drops together or pull tanks in a group which may end up winning them a base.
But winning a base is meaningless so what's the point.

Wolfenstein: enemy Territory, Team Fortress 2 those are games with clear defined objectives. You can not win by just killing the enemy. So you see people working together because they want to win. Teamwork is actually required to win.
Planetside 2 does not require teamwork to win because there is nothing to win. (except continent lock and the Tech plant etc.)
We used to have alerts were you actually saw people working together as a team. Because there was a clear objective! But they butchered that as well.

The main change really is that players used to have a pool of 2250 resources total, and recovered them at about 3x the rate they do now. It punished players who wanted to specialize and encouraged farmers who just rotated between the three. It also allowed people to pull vehicles they are completely uninterested in getting good at every 20 minutes or so. Now players will be reluctant to pull a vehicle they are not serious about playing well.

The new system doesn't really fix the problem many were originally crying about so much though, which is accessibility to air/tank game play to new/casual players. Sure you can pull another ESF right after you wrecked your last one 3 minutes in... but you can only do that a couple times before you are right back to only being able to pull an ESF once every 15-30 minutes.

The ace tankers and pilots are still going to have their ride 100% of the time while not so great casuals will still spend a lot of time ground pounding while waiting on resources. I personally don't have a problem with this - as I think that is how it kind of has to be. Just pointing out that it just changes things, rather than "fix" them.

I have always only flown exclusively, so for me nothing has changed. It will however wreck people who used to pull the 3 classes in chain and recklessly farm in a suicidal fashion.

I started to play PS2 in the week it went out of Beta (did it?). It was a great experience and I enjoyed it so much. But then, the lattice came in and the zerging started. But still there was a chance for dedicated outfits to cut off certain resources from the enemy, still there was a chance to not follow the zerg and contribute to some sort of meta game.
Gone. Now it feels like all players run to that next facility on the grid with all enemies respawning there to defend it. The only focus now is killing people. That is totally boring. It's not me (or the others who are complaining about this) to be sent away to other games. It's those kids with their killing greed and their bloodthirstiness who should go away. I hope SOE will finish that H1Z1 zombie slaughter game soon to get rid of those... And we can get our beautiful strategy game back?

The only people who are upset about the revamp are the people who want an infantry only game,before they mostly only played infantry and now they have no reason not to pull them other than laziness. How exactly do they expect the game to work? Are people just supposed to camp inside the spawnroom like they've been doing? No now people can pull vehicles to counter zergs regularly they just don't want to,just like they don't REALLY care to leave the spawn rooms (many still won't). This has always been a problem with PC Players across many games,they look for exploits and when the game actually works they'll say it's broken to get what they want. SOE the problem is not your game it is your player base,and the only way to fix them is through conditioning and hard knocks.

Must be a TR speaking...

True, except that if you started with the full resources then you could pull two tanks a lot sooner than 35 minutes.

While true that there may be balance between empires (so long as the powerups are balanced across empires, and I would argue these are less balanced between empires than basic infantry) there is, almost by definition, not balance between powerups and no-powerups. The "balance" between powerups and basic infantry is only acheived when we assume that there is a non-trivial cost associated with the powerup that prevents it from being ubiquitous. In other words, if everyone can pull a powerup 100% of the time then there is little incentive not to do so.

I can illustrate this issue with a hypothetical. Suppose all factions have access to weapon X (lets call this weapon Wolverine). Now, Wolverine is better than any other weapon in the game but since all factions can use weapon X the factions are balanced. Problem is, because Wolverine is the best weapon in the game it is not balanced against the other weapons- ergo, if you can use Wolverine you are better off using it than anything else. Now, if you can use Wolverine all the time then, if each faction is trying to maximize it's power, everyone uses Wolverine all the time- because anything else puts you at a disadvantage.

Now, obviously this hypothetical is overly simplified and does not perfectly match PS2 but it does illustrate that how something can have no effect on faction balance but can still disrupt other kinds of balance.

I think these other kinds of balance are important. It is basically just class balance. I want to play LA, lets say, because I enjoy that the most. Problem is, if Wolverine > LA generally then I am putting myself at a disadvantage playing LA rather than Wolverine. This makes playing LA less fun. If Wolverine is costly enough and limited, however, then I am at a disadvantage less often, only have to play Wolverine occassionally to make up for this difference (rather than being forced to become primarily a Wolverine player) and can find solace when I am a LA bested by a Wolverine because I am aware that the other player had to invest something meaningful to have that advantage.

I agree that there is a middle ground where powerups are accessible in moderation. Issue is, where this middle ground actually resides and what constitutes moderation differs from player to player depending on personal preferences. Finding this sweet spot in a game with thousands of players is not so easily acheived.

Right now, just from my limited personal experience, I can say 1) it is nice knowing that if you make a silly mistake and lose your powerup more or less immediately that you can, more or less, just grab another and give it another go- this also helps people new to certain elements get more practice; however, 2) this opens up ways to abuse the system that previously did not exist (though, to be sure, there were methods of abuse that used to exist that no longer do); and 3) though I have not played very much since the revamp, I have been astonished by the availability of powerups and this as a non-subcribing player.

So far, it also seems like this is playing out ingame- I predicted that this change would result in greater vehicles/MAXs and (relatedly but also for other reasons) more HA RL spam. This appears to be bearing itself out and I do not think that is surprising in the least.

Suffice to say, I think it is not a good thing if everyone can essentially choose to be in a powerup as if it was a basic unit because IMO it really hurts the gameplay. It is bad enough that there is virtually no penalty whatsoever for dying as infantry (look at all the abuse capable with suicide tactics), extending this to powerups, IMO, only exacerbates the issue and further waters down the gameplay. PS2 was already nearly devoid of meaningful tactics and strategy, IMO, and this so far seems like a further reduction.

As I said, I recognize that this is only phase 1 and that things are planned to be changed down the road but I question how long it can remain in this state and keep people interested.

This game is all about the team, all about the squad, the platoon (soon the company) and finally the empire.

Team up or get wrecked.

If you want to solo a max, get a max.

Yes, any problem with that? You asked about deployed sundy, after all.

Ive seen this before the revamp

I never heard of a game where people teamed up just to go kill the enemy. With no bigger objective in mind (cutting of resources, winning the alert, holding that generator, etc) then to just plain kill for killing sake. Especially if the enemy respawns in 7 seconds anyway.

Teamwork is important in this game insofar it gives enemies other people to shoot at.

True, so obviously the solution was to make vehicles even more spammable. GG SOE.



Because you can never have enough Sunderers!

So first of all you complain that the other side had support and you could not solo the max because of it, or just plain did not want to fight it. I get that but the only way you can take out teamwork is with teamwork, the max had support ie a team helping it.

Quake, counter strike, half life, eve online etc... Your objectives are whatever you make them to be, and occasionally alerts, base captures, continental lock and shooting the enemy.

And medics to heal you, infiltrators/light assault to scout and spot targets, engineers for more ammo, air/max support to deal with their air, max/armor to deal with their armor/vehicles etc...

But why would they help you? Just to kill some more enemies?

Why eat your lunch if you're just going to poop it out later?

You're delving into absurdity.